Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs (30 page)

“Billy was a mucker, a hoodlum, a gangster, a thug, a tough. When he fought, his methods would have brought a flush of shame to the face of His Satanic Majesty. He had hit oftener from behind than from before. He had always taken every advantage of size and weight and numbers that he could call to his assistance. He was an insulter of girls and women. He was a bar-room brawler, and a saloon-corner loafer. He was all that was dirty, and mean, and contemptible, and cowardly in the eyes of a brave man, and yet, notwithstanding all this, Billy Byrne was no coward.”

The Mucker
and
The Return of The Mucker
tell how Billy Byrne was changed from the rough and tumble Chicago street fighter Burroughs describes above to a civilized man, by his love for socialite Barbara Harding. At the end of the first book, Billy even leaves her, knowing it would never work out for them. He asks that she marry her fiancé, Billy Mallory. The best-selling team of Max Allan Collins and Matthew Clemens write of the day after Billy Byrne leaves. According to them, the couple weren’t quite through with each other.

—Bob

The Two Billys

A Mucker Story

Max Allan Collins and Matthew Clemens

He was no damn coward. Had he been, the dark-haired, muscular mucker named Billy Byrne could not have survived a West Side of Chicago upbringing. He had grown up hard and fast in the neighborhood that ran from Halsted to Robey, and from Grand Avenue to Lake Street, where being a coward was the greatest of all sins.

Not only was Billy not a coward, he had felt fear but twice in his young life.

The first had been as a lad barely into his teens. He was afraid neither of his opponent, Coke Sheehan, nor the outcome of their knuckle-duster. But during the brawl—a dispute over Sheehan welching on paying him money owed for a robbery the two had pulled together—Billy had hit the other boy in the head with a brick, rendering Sheehan unconscious and possibly croaking him.

The possible croaking of Sheehan itself had not scared the mucker, not really; but the idea that the coppers and a judge might make him swing at the end of a rope for it, well, that was damned unsettling, and had sent him briefly into hiding. The brick-bashed Sheehan had survived—too tough and dumb to die, most likely—and eventually Billy had returned to the streets.

The second occasion that had brought Billy that blue funk called fear was right before and during round one of his first prizefight against a top-notch brawler talked about as the next heavyweight champion. So the fight drew a big crowd that hooted and hawed through the introductions of what they figured to be a sorry mismatch, and the jeering went on for the first three minutes as the would-be future champ battered Billy.

Yes, Billy was afraid. Not of losing, nor of his opponent—it was that damned crowd. This brand of fear was simple stage fright, and soon Billy overcame that emotional fog to mop the floor with the “future champion.” The mucker sent the palooka back to the farm in the fifth round.

And yet this mucker unafraid of even the Maylay headhunters of Daimyo Oda Yorimoto stood there in his sweats on the floor of Professor Cassidy’s gym with trembling fingers—fingers unfolding a note just handed him by a messenger boy about as threatening as a newborn pup.

He did not need to read a word to know it was from her—Barbara Harding, the woman he loved, the woman he had left to another man, one befitting her station, not twenty-four hours ago.

The note announced her by way of its fragrance—sweet lilac, like that first hint of spring. She always smelled that way to Billy, even when they had been marooned on a Pacific island and were on the lam from Yorimoto’s headhunters. Even when they were living in hiding on an island in the middle of a raging river on Yoka, and especially when she had safely returned to her father’s Riverside Drive mansion . . . always and ever, she wore the fragrance of lilacs and spring.

A pang of something else other than fear—regret, joy,
something
he could not quite identify—shot through him as he recognized her flowing, smooth handwriting.

Billy,

I need you, something horrible has happened.

Come at once.

Barbara

Nearby in the gym, the stout, Cro-Magnon-browed Cassidy watched two lightweights spar in the main ring. The aroma of sweat, not lilacs, hung in the air, and Billy heard the manager yell at one of the boxers, “Keep your left up for Chrissakes! He’ll take your bleedin’ head off.”

Next to Billy, the messenger boy stood silently, waiting for a response and maybe a tip.

Carefully, the mucker folded the note and palmed it.

“Any answer?” the boy asked.

The mucker shook his head and found a dime for the boy, who left, but not in a rush, mesmerized as he was by being this close to real live fighters.

Standing there, watching but not seeing the lightweights spar, Billy felt his insides roiling like dark storm clouds as he tried to figure out a way to ignore Barbara’s summons. It had taken every ounce of strength he had to walk out the door yesterday. To return a day later, into that world where he knew he did not belong, that would be harder than any bout Cassidy could wrangle for him. He knew he had no place in the Hardings’ mansion, and he knew Barbara was better off with someone of her own station, like William Mallory . . . but God how he loved her. If he walked back in, could he find the strength to walk out again?

Billy changed into his suit and tie—not fancy enough for a visit to a millionaire, but they would have to do—and, coming out of the locker room, he almost ran into Professor Cassidy.

“You gonna be gone long?” the manager asked.

“Who said I was leaving?”

“If I couldn’t read that mug of yours like a map, I’d be a poor damn manager indeed. How long, son?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it the skirt?”

Billy nodded.

“We’ll be here when you get back,” Cassidy said and strolled away toward the sparring ring.

Turning, Billy went out and grabbed a spot on one of the trolley cars. Cassidy’s gym was not far from the Battery, and the ride gave Billy time to think as the trolley clanked and rattled northward.

She was there, as she always was, in his mind’s eye—her auburn hair pinned up, leaving her high-cheekboned face and large green eyes uncovered. This look allowed people to meet her as she met the world—head on. Barbara was impetuous, strong, brave, and she had saved Billy’s life. Maybe she hadn’t taken a bullet or a blade for him; but she had saved him, nonetheless.

Teaching Billy that the straight life was not a cowardly road to travel, she had won him over; and along the way she had shown him how to speak and act and carry himself like a gentleman, as well. Billy found himself wanting to be a better man just to please her. Even his mucker’s mind could perceive that this was a transformation little short of miraculous, though for him that transformation had turned out to be far easier than he might ever have imagined.

A man might act a right sissy for the love of a good woman, and Barbara was a good woman, all right. But Billy knew in his mind, if not his heart, that she was not for him. Wealthy, from a good family, a genteel woman, Barbara Harding deserved better than a hardscrabble slum tough, no matter how much he may have changed.

Riding that trolley back to the mansion of her father—the wealthy, well-born Anthony Harding—Billy did his best not to read disaster into that tucked-away note. But how could he not?

“Something horrible has happened.”

What could that be? What could be so bad that she would summon him so soon after he had thrust her into the arms of another man?

Billy hopped off the trolley car and briskly walked the last few blocks. Even from a distance, in this incredibly swank neighborhood, the Harding manse stood out as a monument to wealth and breeding. A multimillionaire who was no doubt overjoyed that the mucker was finally out of his daughter’s life, Harding would not likely be pleased to see who was about to come calling . . .

On this beautiful Saturday afternoon, the swells who lived in these posh digs were out taking the air as Billy passed. Some looked down their noses at the mucker, whose clothes, though nicer than anything he had ever owned, were a far cry from the day coats of the gentlemen strolling the avenue next to ladies in fine frocks. A few nasty glances, with the rest ignoring him, only emphasized how out of place Billy was in these airy environs.

As he strolled the last block, Billy saw something across the street that put a prickle on the back of his neck. Ducking behind the ornate stairway two doors down from the Hardings’, Billy was free to gaze, and having done so was glad he had followed his instincts.

On the opposite side of the avenue, hidden in the shadows of a stairway himself, a man could be made out, well, not a man—a boy, really, dressed not that different from himself. The boy’s eyes were glued to the Hardings’ front door. Whatever problem had prompted Barbara to send for Billy, he felt certain that the lookout across the street was part of it.

Billy doubled back to the corner and came around to the mansion’s rear, keeping his eyes peeled for compatriots of the lookout; but he saw no one. Coming up to the servants’ door in the back, reversing the very route he had used to quit the Harding house yesterday, Billy wondered if maybe he should just kick the door in and go in, fists up.

Picking the lock and going in quietly was not in Billy’s bag of tricks, after all. But considering there was a lookout across the street, and that Barbara had been able to get a note out, he figured the danger inside the house itself was probably minimal, at least for now. He chose to knock—politely.

Smith, Mr. Harding’s gentleman’s gentleman, opened the door a sliver. A thin, severe man with muttonchops and a seemingly perpetual scowl, Smith stepped aside and let Billy in, saying with a sniff, “Miss Harding and her father are expecting you . . . in the drawing room,
sir
.”

Why did those who attended the rich have even more snobbish an attitude than the rich themselves? This a boy of the slums would never understand.

The back entryway, a mere vestibule, led into the kitchen near the servants’ quarters and the rear stairwell the help used. The shadowy little space held the afterglow aroma of a hearty breakfast. Billy felt, and heard, his stomach growl.

“Through here,” Smith said, leading the way into the kitchen.

One maid, a blonde, sat at the table, polishing silver. Another, a brunette, stood over a sink plucking feathers from a chicken. The walls hid behind massive wooden cabinets, their doors made of glass, revealing opulent plates, cups, and silver.

Smith marched him through the ornate dining room with its fancy chandeliers, oaken table, and chairs with padded brocade-upholstered seats. Huge landscape paintings lined the oak-paneled walls. While a dining room, this seemed a man’s chamber, the colors deep and dark, the wood of the highest quality. Cigar smell hung in the air. This room, this house, belonged to a very successful, important man, and Anthony Harding was certainly that.

Finally, after a walk that rivaled the jaunt from the trolley stop, Billy found himself at the front entranceway. Here the servant led him across the marble-floored foyer, passing the wide carpeted staircase, finally stopping at the doorway to the parlor.

At the edge of that doorway, Smith announced “Mr. Byrne” with all the joy of a judge handing down a verdict.

As the butler stepped aside, Billy entered the room to find Mr. Harding standing across the room near the fireplace, his face a mask of dismay. Seated in a velvet-covered chair, her eyes red from crying, a hanky clinched in her fist, Barbara looked up as Billy entered the room. She looked pale, and her countenance had not worn such alarm since they were being chased by headhunters.

Rising, she rushed into Billy’s arms, pressing hard against him, the scent of her filling his nostrils, and, for a second, he thought he might come completely apart, like a china figurine flung on a hardwood floor.

Then, remembering where he was, Billy glanced over to see that Mr. Harding had discreetly turned to poke at the burnt-out ashes of last night’s fire rather than see the impropriety of their embrace. Though a quite proper man, Harding knew how his daughter felt about the mucker, and as long as this was as far as things went, he would indulge her. She was, however, engaged to another, and that must never be forgotten.

Pulling away from the woman he loved, Billy saw tears running anew down her cheeks. “Here, here—what’s all this, then?”

Barbara dabbed at moist eyes. “It’s the
other
Billy—he’s been kidnapped.”

Sharing a first name with one William Mallory wasn’t the only way the two were joined. They were also in love with the same woman. Mallory, however, was of her station, Billy decidedly not.

His hands found her shoulders supportively. “What happened?”

Looking to her father, who said nothing, Barbara explained. “After you left me yesterday, after you called Billy to come back, and told him that I loved him, wanted to marry him . . .”